Petroleum Effect
Chapter Eight – Temple of Madness
Zakera Ward, The Citadel, Serpent Nebula, 23 June 2183
Lilith Shepard, Miranda Lawson and Kaiden Alenko made good time towards the temple. Once they were out of range of the battle for the Ward C-Sec headquarters they decloaked and sat for a while in a quiet spot between between two large metallic refuse containers in an alley. Other than dents to Shepard's armour and bruising, they were all at full efficiency.
Shepard sipped pure water from the armour dispenser. Because of humanity's desire not to interact with alien biospheres nor alien biochemistry, sealed combat armour had its own air supply, thermal regulator and basic liquid recycler, despite being relatively slimline. This was made possible by advanced materials technology and nano-fabrication.
"What's the plan?" asked Miranda. It was an acknowledgement that, theoretically, Shepard was mission lead. In practice, Miranda was a Grey Lady – a partial Transcendent with powers, capabilities and government-level seniority way beyond Shepard's. The original plan to chase down Nihlus and his strange, alien allies had gone out of the window in the face of an attempt by the Eviloids to take over the galaxy. Miranda had repeatedly had to step in to deal with major events.
Still Shepard would do all she could to impress, "We need a short break to recover. Then we approach on foot, conceal ourselves and observe the building, view from multiple sides if at all possible. Then, we attack. I anticipate that our available practical tactics will be limited. We will have to cloak and take out the leadership, but we face a risk that the surviving Eviloid from earlier has warned them of our presence and a possible attack."
"We've observed that once they know we are there they can break the cloak, but not our mind-shields, so we need to get in and kill as many of them as we can at once. It may be depending on how prepared they are we have to withdraw and come up with another plan."
Miranda reflected for a moment. Then she turned up her suit loudspeakers and shouted in Asari, "Keepers, we eliminated the Daughters and the Care Bears attacking the Zakera Ward C-Sec except one Care Bear got away. We call them Eviloids, incidentally. Do you have any suggested next steps? They are likely forewarned and fortified now."
There was no response but silence. The mysterious guardians of the Citadel had nothing to say.
The three humans rested for a while, then got up and quietly headed along the road toward the temple.
Temple of the Golden Star, Zakera Ward, The Citadel, Serpent Nebula, 23 June 2183
The Terrans stood, pressed against a wall and protected by Miranda's psionic cloak, looking at the alien structure.
The Temple of the Golden Star headquarters on the Citadel was an imposing building. Many organisations struggled to afford so much as a single rented room, but the Temple had premises of their own, even had a garden. A sleek, glossy, central building swept out into two wings which almost fully enclosed a garden. Discreet spotlights around the rim of the roof shone artificial sunlight down on alien grass and what looked like saplings of the candy-floss trees from the planets Rainbow-2 and Care-a-Lot.
Access to the temple garden was via an arch that connected the points where the two wings curved back towards each other. Above the entrance was a five pointed star rendered in gold, with a single point upwards, and unsettling, biological, curves to the five points. The main entrance to the building was on the inside, opposite the arch on the other side of the garden.
There were no sentients in sight but even so the temple radiated a sense of dread, of lurking, furtive evil. Quietly studying the aura, Miranda realised that were it not for her shield, she would be overwhelmed with a sense of love, joy and welcome which would have masked the overwhelming horror. The mental attack was constant and draining even to her. Shepard and Alenko were maintaining their mental shields but they clearly felt it too. Even from fifty metres away, the sense of wrongness was overwhelming.
Miranda attempted to remote view the building, moving her awareness towards the arch and through. As she did the sense of threat grew until she was overwhelmed with terror. Miranda felt a sense of terrible vulnerability, as though she was more visible when remotely viewing the temple than if she were physically standing in it. She withdrew her senses, an icy chill in the pit of her stomach.
"We can't go in through the main entrance," said Miranda, "if we are going in, we need to attack from the side."
"Should we go in at all?" asked Shepard, "We planned this as a decapitation strike but their main assets outnumber us almost three-to-one, they can break our cloaks and could have any number of followers in there."
Miranda thought for a moment, "We go in," she said slowly, "nothing we have encountered so far has been a threat to me only an inconvenience. I will go ahead. But … we won't be using the main entrance."
For a moment, Miranda concentrated then she gestured, unnecessarily and theatrically. A truck on the road nearby violently hurled itself at a point to the right of the archway, shattering windows and wall. She gestured again and the vehicle, ruined, dented and covered in debris, fell back into the street.
Carefully, still cloaked, Lilith, Miranda and Kaiden entered the building through the hole in the wall. On the other side was what looked like an unused office off a corridor. They quickly passed through, stepping over the rubble and debris into a silent, empty, corridor. Inside there were no obvious defences and so they continued forward.
A loud voice boomed in the corridor, "Humans we know you are there. We only want to talk. You may as well hear us out before we start the shooting."
Around the corner in the corridor ahead of them came three black-clad Asari with their hands raised and open. After a moment, when there was no shooting, a Daughter followed behind them. The beautiful creature was holding something blue in its hand. Shepard raised her weapon but Miranda gestured for her to lower it.
The cloak dropped. "What?" snarled Miranda.
"Thank you," said the lead Asari, "I am Nira Helius. We would like you to come and speak to the blessed ones of Gold Star and hear what this is about. We promise safe passage."
Shepard looked closely. The Daughter had raised the blue, hairless object to its mouth and was delicately, sensuously gnawing on it. She was holding an Asari hand and forearm. A very small hand and forearm. Blue blood trickled down.
"Um. Your friend there is eating an Asari. Like, right now. Looks like a child."
"We give up our old, useless daughters, and in exchange the Care Bears give us new, beautiful ones, Daughters of the Golden Star."
"What is there to talk about?"
"The mutual threat. You may as well hear us. We are leaving so you will prevail anyway, at least on the Citadel. You will not be harmed."
Miranda sighed. She gestured to the others to follow her lead, "Okay. Lead on then?"
The Daughter smiled and turned, as did the three Asari, heedless of the three armed and armoured Terran soldiers behind them. They marched back the way they had come, the Daughter swaying its hips lasciviously as it sashayed on its ivory heels, the Asari moving with a military gait.
Most of the building was empty, clean and well decorated. Cheery signs about the glory of 'Gold Star' abounded. There were a lot of posters with various religious images including cute looking Care Bears and ecstatic looking Asari.
The group came to a stairwell and started up.
"This isn't the main stairwell, but it gets to the sanctum the quickest," said Nira, "it passes through the Daughters' room though."
At the top of the stairs, at the end of a corridor, was a large room. Bones, some of which still had flesh, littered the floor. A lot of the bones were small. At the end of the room were a set of cages in which a number of emaciated young Asari were visible. Several of them were lying motionless on the floor and some appeared to be injured or missing limbs.
"Mom," begged one of the Asari children tearfully in the direction of the three adult Asari, "my arm..." The alien child waved a bloody stump that ended at the elbow. Shepard was pretty sure it matched the hand and forearm the Daughter was gnawing on. The adult Asari ignored the creature. The humans looked in horror briefly but then continued on, as did Miranda and Alenko.
They left the charnel house of the Daughters' lair and its living larder into another corridor, which was notably clean and free of any evidence of the gore they had left behind.
Passing a heavy velvet curtain the party entered a heavily decorated, spacious chamber that more resembled a church or a temple. They had entered the room through a side door concealed by the curtain. The room was clearly a more public area. There were paintings, scenes depicting beautiful landscapes with Daughters, Asari, Turians and Care-Bears. There were carvings on the walls and there were rows of opulent, wooden, cushioned chairs. In the middle of the room near the back wall there was an idol of a golden star with a kind face in the middle, before which was something like an altar.
In front of the idol was a bear with golden fur.
"Hi there," trilled the bear in its high pitched, childish voice, "I'm Glory Bear. I'm here to tell you the truth!"
The three humans noticed the four other bears and two more Daughters in the shadows behind the altar.
"What truth?" asked Miranda.
"What's your name?"
"Grey Lady Miranda Lawson. What truth?"
"These are my friends, Starflower Bear, Huggle Bear, Laughter Bear and Fertile Bear. Here are three of our daughters, too! The Daughters of the Golden Star!"
"Well, these are my friends Lieutenant Commander Lilith Shepard and Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko. What. Truth?"
"We're the Care Bears. And you're the humans."
"And?" asked Miranda.
"And we know you have power. Not like the others in this place. You resisted our enlightenment!"
"We've killed your kind before, Bear."
The bear grimaced, "That makes me sad!" it said in a sorrowful voice, "But your strength comes with knowledge. After you resisted us we tried to find some of you on the Citadel but all the humans were on their ships. You hardly ever leave your ships. You hate this place. You know what it is."
"We know it's dangerous," said Miranda, "what do you know?"
"It's old. Nearly a billion years old. Can't you sense the death?"
"And?"
"The Protheans didn't make it."
"So who did?"
"Bad people who don't like Gold Star!"
"Lots of people don't like Gold Star. One of his 'Daughters' over there is munching on an Asari arm. From their larder of living Asari children. Do better. Who made the Citadel?"
"Whoever makes the stars wrong. We're here because the stars are wrong because the younger races keep getting wiped out! They grow, they come here, they die and this galaxy never ripens! Roughly every fifty thousand Galactic Standard Years!"
"How do you know this? Wouldn't you need to be ancient to notice?"
"Gold Star is ancient."
"What do you want and what do you intend to do?"
"We need to control this place and understand its secrets."
"Looks like you've failed. Your forces were being defeated last time we looked."
The bear looked annoyed, in a cartoonish way. It would be comical if Miranda hadn't just walked through a Citadel on fire, fought a Daughter to the death and passed through a room with Asari children being eaten alive with the active connivance of their own mothers.
"This place undoes our enlightenment. It was unexpected."
"Mind control works better if its a lot less obvious. Like, a lot. You want the Citadel but your current plan has failed."
"We're running out of time. There are lots of younger races right now. The average period between the races being wiped out has elapsed. Help us."
"What happens if the stars become right?"
"Gold Star and the others will come. The ancients will come and fill the galaxy with their glory and their children. The younger races will be shepherded into their service."
Shepard and Alenko listened as Miranda and the bear spoke. Miranda's thoughts ran in the background. The things the bear was telling her were consistent with the Terran Dominion's best intelligence. However, the creature must realise that its proposition was hardly enticing. It sounded like she was being given the choice between a galactic genocide carried out by whatever was behind the Citadel and the thing behind the Eviloids.
Miranda sensed it then. Furtive and hiding its presence. Something was forming in the air. Had been for a while but it had directed their attention away, even hers. Shadow uncoiling, like an evil cloud seeping through a crack in reality. The bears were unable to control the humans, so they simply intended to get something more powerful to subvert them. They had miscalculated again though, they thought she did not notice and they may also not have realised she was partially Transcendent – if they even knew what that meant. Miranda gathered her power as stealthily as she could whilst she kept the bear talking. She asked, "What do you want from us?"
The Eviloid continued its pitch, "Nowhere else in the galaxy can resist us, but this place can. Help us get to the Council, so we can hold the Citadel."
Miranda focused her power on herself, whilst simultaneously unleashing everything she had in her augments. She moved at superhuman speed, with superhuman accuracy. In less than a second, she raised her weapon, drilled Glory Bear in the forehead with a single shot from her assault rifle and shot Fertile Bear with equal accuracy, its head coming away in a shower of pinkish blood.
"It's a trap!" shouted Miranda, "Withdraw! Now! Move!"
A crushing weight fell on all the humans. It was the three Asari. Overlooked, the enslaved Asari were powerful biotics and each of them pinned a human to the ground with their power. Shepard and Alenko fell to the ground. The darkness in the air thickened. Tendrils seeped from the centre of the forming mass towards Miranda. Three streams of light burst from Starflower Bear, Laughter Bear and Huggle Bear, pressing at her mental shields. Something else began to press against her mind, something sly and powerful which brought a sense of profound existential dread.
An ordinary human could not have stood under that pressure and Miranda's psionics were being matched by the attack from the bears and the Thing in the darkness. Miranda was not just psionic however, but augmented in muscle, sinew and bone. She fell to one knee but she raised her gun and fired again, killing Huggle Bear instantly.
At the same time, Shepard flared with an aura of indigo light and lifted her gun just enough to fire a burst which took Starflower Bear in the torso. A redoubled flare of cobalt light from the biotic attack pressed her back down and an Asari foot kicked her assault rifle away.
As the bears' attack weakened, Miranda strengthened her shield. The pressure from the darkness continued to grow. Miranda tried to turn but she was borne to the ground by the three Daughters. Silently, they held her down as the questing tendrils reached out.
Miranda was still not out. As a Transcend, her augmetics equipped her for spaceflight. She had hidden, inbuilt Petroleum Effect forcefields and reactionless gravitic impellers. Adding the impellers to her strength she began to rise. Miranda shot one Daughter, then turned and shot an Asari. The biotic field holding Kaiden down dissipated.
The remaining two Daughters extended their claws. They had been trying to hold Miranda down for the darkness, whatever it was, but now they were ready to try and do some damage. The pressure on Miranda's mental shields was now almost overwhelming.
Kaiden shot a second Asari, then a third. Miranda slammed into the ceiling as the biotic field pressing her down faded. She cut her impellers, landing neatly and doing a gratuitous pose like the hero in a superhero movie.
Kaiden shot a Daughter in the back whilst Miranda grabbed the last one. It scrabbled at her armour, scoring deep lines but not penetrating. Miranda ripped its head off.
Meanwhile, Shepard tackled Laughter Bear. Dragging the struggling Eviloid across the floor, she retrieved her rifle and shot it in the head repeatedly. It was very, very dead before she stopped shooting.
With all the other psionic threats eliminated, Miranda pushed back at the darkness with her full power. The unpleasant, tainted presence retreated, slithering away into the crack in the universe from which it came. The sense of oppression and evil lifted. Suddenly, the Terrans were in an ordinary room full of bodies. They gasped with relief.
From outside came the sound of vehicles. It was C-Sec and the military. They would not be in a mood to take prisoners.
The humans took a moment to recover, then banging and crashes came from elsewhere in the building as C-Sec and the military opened fire on the building. The three Terrans gathered around Miranda, rippled and vanished.
"Looks like C-Sec and the marines will deal with the remaining cultists," remarked Alenko.
"Shame they can't deal with cloaks," smirked Miranda.
Terran Dominion Frigate Normandy, The Citadel, Serpent Nebula, 23 June 2183
The trip back to the Normandy had been uneventful. Escaping from the temple building had been the most dangerous. Cloaked, the three humans had smashed through a window and Miranda had flown them past C-Sec and the troops from the Citadel Defence Fleet. They had left not a moment too soon – C-Sec and the military could not take prisoners for fear of mind control. They had levelled the building.
Returning to the Presidium had been only slightly more difficult. All the routes were guarded but the humans had slipped invisibly into a lift behind a functionary who was then influenced not to notice their presence. From the Presidium the humans had made their way back to the Normandy without difficulty.
Miranda was relaxing in her office. After showering and resting, she had started on her mission report. In the meantime, the Citadel forces had begun mopping up the bodies and remaining cultists. Citadel News had an announcement of a galaxy wide crackdown on the Temple of the Golden Star, which was interspersed with reports about the fighting and tragic deaths of Citadel residents from brain swelling and haemorrhages.
The comm chimed, it was Gunther, "Lady Lawson, we have an incoming communication for you … it seems to be a keeper. Do you want to take the call?"
"Accept please."
A comm window opened on one of Miranda's screens. It was indeed a keeper.
"Hello Miranda Lawson."
"And what should I call you?" asked Miranda.
"We are grateful for your intervention." The keeper ignored Miranda's question but sent an image of the temple fight, which appeared on Miranda's screen for a moment.
"Well, thank you too," said Miranda, "now why are you calling?"
"We were only calling to thank you. There is little time Miranda Lawson. Whether or not the lesser races will defeat this particular infestation, they face many threats."
"That sounds ominous."
"Organic races struggle up from the primordial ooze. At every stage in their evolution, they must change or die. Make haste, for you have little time. That advice is all we can give you, save one thing. Nihlus is seeking an Asari expert on the Protheans called Liara T'Soni. He believes she is on the planet Therum in the Knossos System in the Artemis Tau cluster. Thank you for your help, human Miranda Lawson."
The connection ended.
Thanks and goodbye, thought Miranda, unimpressed. She reflected for a moment. Time to go. Their pursuit of Nihlus was already delayed. Miranda could send the reports via the QEC from anywhere. If the Citadel Council worked out humanity was involved in defeating the Eviloids there would be questions.
Miranda reflected on whether to move Udina back to the Righteous Enterprise III but she decided not to. He had not done anything wrong but he was not yet fully recovered and had not been fully examined. If he did recover however, it was clear the Citadel would now need a Grey Lord or Lady as the ambassador with a suitably militaristic backup team. A non-Transcendent would simply not cut it.
If Udina was untainted and was allowed to live, he would be getting a comfortable retirement with its large pension to enjoy, back on Earth.